The Front Page Cover
The Events of the Week -- Featuring:
Separating fact from innuendo
in the Flynn fiasco
by Eli Lake
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Top Headlines
Trump prepares new orders targeting EPA. (Washington Examiner)
Grassroots appeal? Trump smashes liar-nObama's small-donor fundraising pace, bests liar-Clinton, Sanders combined. (The Washington Times)
U.S. to Putin: Sanctions to remain in place until Crimea occupation ends. (CNS News)
Federal appeals court upholds Maryland ban on so-called "assault weapons." (Washington Post)
Texas judge blocks state from cutting Planned Parenthood funding. (Washington Examiner)
John Podesta: It's possible that "forces within the FBI" wanted liar-Hillary Clinton to lose — or NOT. (Hot Air)
Trump administration to rewrite liar-nObama's absurd transgender rule. (Washington Examiner)
Missouri man charged with plotting Islamic State terror attack on Kansas City. (The Kansas City Star)
Michigan State University bans whiteboards on dorm doors because people write things on them. (Reason)
Truly hard-hitting so-called journalism: President Trump's favorite so-called insult — "everything that Donald Trump has referred to as 'so-called' on Twitter — and our analysis of whether that so-called thing is actually that thing or not." (The Washington Post)
Police cancel "High Five Friday" because "undocumented children" might feel uncomfortable. (Law Newz)
Humor: Trump listens to liar-Clinton and liar-nObama on immigration policy. (YouTube)
Policy: Decline of unions under right-to-work laws levels playing field for Trump. (The Daily Signal) ~The Patriot Post
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Defense Secretary Mattis Attacks Pentagon
Waste As Enemy In Offensive
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Secretary of Defense General James Mattis took aim at the issue of Defense Department spending and waste, issuing two directives seeking the better utilization of financial resources through the addition and consolidation of positions and functions across departments... The first memorandum called for a reorganization of some undersecretary roles, the addition of a chief innovation officer, an improved chief management officer position and more efficient utilization of cyber operations. A second memo called for the establishment of “cross-functional teams” to be formed across military services, in an effort to minimize unnecessary and unproductive duplication of functions and services... http://rickwells.us/defense-secretary-mattis-attacks-pentagon-waste-enemy-offensive/
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Tucker Carlson hilariously mocks protest organizer
who says ‘Trump is more dangerous than Hitler’
by Chris Enloe
{theblaze.com} ~ Fox News host Tucker Carlson battled Tuesday with a protest organizer whose organization “Refuse Fascism” is attempting to drive President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence out of office... because “the future of humanity and the planet” depend on it. “Humanity is facing an emergency,” Sunsara Taylor told Carlson. “Trump and Pence are operating out of Hitler’s playbook, only they have nuclear weapons.” Taylor continued to reiterate her comparison of Trump to Hitler, but Carlson wasn’t buying it. If Taylor really believed Trump was Hitler, then she would be committing acts of violence to stop him instead of appearing on his talk show, Carlson told her... http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/02/22/tucker-carlson-hilariously-mocks-protest-organizer-who-says-trump-is-more-dangerous-than-hitler/
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liar-nObama Sedition Against America,
Time To Eliminate Filibuster
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Lou Dobbs raises the activities of Hussein liar-nObama and without mentioning him by name, his sponsor, George Soros... He notes their attacks on the United States and its people, waging obstructionist, vitriolic and outright hostile campaigns against the President of the United States and the government we elected. Dobbs interviews Rep Chris Collins (R-NY), referencing the actions of “Barack liar-nObama, who many claim will be creating a shadow government to frustrate the policy goals of this administration.” He says, ”we’re looking at something that’s coming very close, it seems to me, to sedition.” Dobbs continues, “When you start working against the interests of the United States government, whether it’s in the person of Donald Trump or whomever, and conspiring and organizing, to frustrate the policies that he intends to execute, I think that that really takes us to a whole other level. What do you think?”... http://rickwells.us/dobbs-obama-sedition-america-time-eliminate-filibuster/
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Feds Paid $1 Billion in Social Security
Benefits to Individuals Without a SSN
by Elizabeth Harrington
{freebeacon.com} ~ The Social Security Administration paid $1 billion in benefits to individuals who did not have a Social Security Number (SSN), according to a new audit... The agency’s inspector general found errors in the government’s documentation for representative payees, otherwise known as individuals who receive retirement or disability payments on behalf of another person who is incapable of managing the benefits themselves. The audit released Friday found thousands of cases where there was no SSN on file. Over the last decade, the agency paid $1 billion to 22,426 representative payees who "did not have an SSN, and SSA had not followed its policy to retain the paper application."...This is why its going broke.
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Gen Flynn Just First Victim Of liar-nObama
Rhodes Propaganda Machine
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Former National Security Adviser General Mike Flynn was forced out of his position as the result of a successful, months-long campaign targeting him... Adam Kredo, senior writer for the Washington Free Beacon, tells how the perpetrators at the top of the liar-nObama regime were motivated by a variety of factors, most significantly among them their desire to protect the Iran deal. One has to wonder the reason for their preoccupation with secrecy afterward liar-nObama has left office. It’s almost as if they’ve got a personal stake in keeping something hidden. And maybe they’ve got mischief planned or underway for the interference in current or future events. Both of those considerations are possible and their prospects enhanced in light of another bit of information that Kredo shares. He reveals the effort to by liar-nObama operatives, including the ‘pretend’ President and Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes and others, to structure an echo chamber of the same type they used to create the negative propaganda campaign that ultimately led to General Flynn’s resignation... http://rickwells.us/kredo-gen-flynn-just-first-victim-obama-rhodes-propaganda-machine/
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Separating fact from innuendo
in the Flynn fiasco
by Eli Lake
{jewishworldreview.com} ~ The issue with the ouster of Michael Flynn as national security adviser is not the mishandling of classified information, despite some of President Donald Trump's tweets about it. It's about Flynn's detractors selectively disclosing to the public the communications of U.S. officials, and how this represents a chilling abuse of power.
The backdrop to this is all the open questions about how Russia influenced the last election, and whether Trump's associates colluded in this operation. That is a necessary investigation. If Trump and his advisers had anything to do with that, it's a high crime.
The good news is that the FBI, in conjunction with the intelligence community, is now probing the matter. So is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. There is also renewed momentum for a more formal independent commission to examine all of this as well. That's important.
But it's worth asking what any of this has to do with Flynn. He failed to give all the details of some December phone calls with the Russian ambassador but at no point has been accused of working with Russia in its campaign to hack leading Democrats, distribute their e-mails on the internet or sabotage the election in less grotesque ways. While others in Trump's orbit, including his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, are allegedly being investigated for this, The Washington Post has reported that Flynn is not now a target of an FBI probe.
So what law did Flynn violate? According to the New York Times, he may have violated the Logan Act, an antiquated statute that prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign adversaries. The Times reported that liar-nObama administration advisers believed Flynn may have negotiated a deal with Russia just after liar-nObama had imposed new sanctions and expelled Russian spies as punishment for Moscow's interference in the election. On Thursday, The Post reported that Flynn may have misled FBI agents investigating the phone calls.
There are a few important points here. To start, there is no indication that Flynn made any quid pro quo with the Russians. The Times reports this, and I have confirmed it with my own sources. Second, the Logan Act, which dates to 1799, is likely unconstitutional. The Justice Department does not prosecute Americans violating it. And in this case, the private citizen was about to become the national security adviser. If it's illegal for incoming U.S. officials to discuss policy with foreign adversaries, then the hard work of preparing the transition of a foreign policy agenda for an incoming administration will be outlawed. The FBI investigation is more serious, but so is disclosing the bureau's ongoing investigations to the press.
It's also been reported that Flynn had contacts with Russians during the election. That's a bit more troubling but means very little in and of itself. It's also not unprecedented. In 2008, an liar-nObama foreign policy adviser, Daniel Kurtzer, traveled to Damascus to offer the government there his views on the Syria-Israeli peace talks.
Many Democrats, including former Secretary of State John hanoi-Kerry, met with Iran's ambassador to the United Nations during George W. Bush's final years as president at a moment when our military leaders accused Iran of killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq by providing militias with improvised explosive devices. If Bush's FBI had launched Logan Act investigations in that period, would Democrats have cheered on the leaks of the investigations?
Flynn may have concealed his contacts with Russian nationals in the last year. He did attend a 2015 conference in Moscow put on by the Russian propaganda network RT, for which he was paid by his speaker's bureau. Some reporters have raised the prospect that Flynn's receipt of money that initially came from Russia violated the Pentagon's guidelines for retired members of the military.
The weakest reed in all of this is the charge that Flynn would be susceptible to Russian blackmail because he did not tell Vice President Mike Pence the full story about his phone call. According to The Post, then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates felt compelled to take this information to the White House at the end of January because she was so concerned that Flynn was compromised.
This sounds like concern-trolling to me. If Flynn forgot the brief discussion of sanctions in his phone call with the Russian ambassador, as he claimed in his resignation letter, it's far-fetched to think the Russians could coerce him to betray his country to not expose the "lie." This is why it's so important to release the transcripts of these phone calls to the public, as former U.S. attorney Andy McCarthy argues in his National Review column.
Nonetheless, the damage is now done. Republicans are saying that Flynn should be asked to testify before Congress. His security clearance has been suspended. He has retained a lawyer. Flynn will likely spend months and possibly years defending himself because he briefly talked to the Russian ambassador about sanctions a few weeks before he was about to become Trump's national security adviser.
If that's all there is to this, then the Democrats and the FBI should be ashamed of themselves. There is a far more important matter to investigate: the Russian influence operation against the U.S. election and whether Trump and any associates aided and abetted it. So far, no one has alleged that Flynn had anything to do with that. This hasn't stopped his accusers though from trying and convicting him in the press. Flynn's enemies waged this campaign by disclosing communications that we should be able to trust the government to monitor with proper discretion. Thanks to these leaks, that trust has eroded.
The backdrop to this is all the open questions about how Russia influenced the last election, and whether Trump's associates colluded in this operation. That is a necessary investigation. If Trump and his advisers had anything to do with that, it's a high crime.
The good news is that the FBI, in conjunction with the intelligence community, is now probing the matter. So is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. There is also renewed momentum for a more formal independent commission to examine all of this as well. That's important.
But it's worth asking what any of this has to do with Flynn. He failed to give all the details of some December phone calls with the Russian ambassador but at no point has been accused of working with Russia in its campaign to hack leading Democrats, distribute their e-mails on the internet or sabotage the election in less grotesque ways. While others in Trump's orbit, including his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, are allegedly being investigated for this, The Washington Post has reported that Flynn is not now a target of an FBI probe.
So what law did Flynn violate? According to the New York Times, he may have violated the Logan Act, an antiquated statute that prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign adversaries. The Times reported that liar-nObama administration advisers believed Flynn may have negotiated a deal with Russia just after liar-nObama had imposed new sanctions and expelled Russian spies as punishment for Moscow's interference in the election. On Thursday, The Post reported that Flynn may have misled FBI agents investigating the phone calls.
There are a few important points here. To start, there is no indication that Flynn made any quid pro quo with the Russians. The Times reports this, and I have confirmed it with my own sources. Second, the Logan Act, which dates to 1799, is likely unconstitutional. The Justice Department does not prosecute Americans violating it. And in this case, the private citizen was about to become the national security adviser. If it's illegal for incoming U.S. officials to discuss policy with foreign adversaries, then the hard work of preparing the transition of a foreign policy agenda for an incoming administration will be outlawed. The FBI investigation is more serious, but so is disclosing the bureau's ongoing investigations to the press.
It's also been reported that Flynn had contacts with Russians during the election. That's a bit more troubling but means very little in and of itself. It's also not unprecedented. In 2008, an liar-nObama foreign policy adviser, Daniel Kurtzer, traveled to Damascus to offer the government there his views on the Syria-Israeli peace talks.
Many Democrats, including former Secretary of State John hanoi-Kerry, met with Iran's ambassador to the United Nations during George W. Bush's final years as president at a moment when our military leaders accused Iran of killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq by providing militias with improvised explosive devices. If Bush's FBI had launched Logan Act investigations in that period, would Democrats have cheered on the leaks of the investigations?
Flynn may have concealed his contacts with Russian nationals in the last year. He did attend a 2015 conference in Moscow put on by the Russian propaganda network RT, for which he was paid by his speaker's bureau. Some reporters have raised the prospect that Flynn's receipt of money that initially came from Russia violated the Pentagon's guidelines for retired members of the military.
The weakest reed in all of this is the charge that Flynn would be susceptible to Russian blackmail because he did not tell Vice President Mike Pence the full story about his phone call. According to The Post, then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates felt compelled to take this information to the White House at the end of January because she was so concerned that Flynn was compromised.
This sounds like concern-trolling to me. If Flynn forgot the brief discussion of sanctions in his phone call with the Russian ambassador, as he claimed in his resignation letter, it's far-fetched to think the Russians could coerce him to betray his country to not expose the "lie." This is why it's so important to release the transcripts of these phone calls to the public, as former U.S. attorney Andy McCarthy argues in his National Review column.
Nonetheless, the damage is now done. Republicans are saying that Flynn should be asked to testify before Congress. His security clearance has been suspended. He has retained a lawyer. Flynn will likely spend months and possibly years defending himself because he briefly talked to the Russian ambassador about sanctions a few weeks before he was about to become Trump's national security adviser.
If that's all there is to this, then the Democrats and the FBI should be ashamed of themselves. There is a far more important matter to investigate: the Russian influence operation against the U.S. election and whether Trump and any associates aided and abetted it. So far, no one has alleged that Flynn had anything to do with that. This hasn't stopped his accusers though from trying and convicting him in the press. Flynn's enemies waged this campaign by disclosing communications that we should be able to trust the government to monitor with proper discretion. Thanks to these leaks, that trust has eroded.
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